Has anyone here used their (or someone else's) old car for wedding duties? Erindoors and I pressed the A40 Devon into service for this some years back, fortunately the trip wasn't far and it passed without incident.

My son and his fiancee wanted my Mk1 Escort as the wedding car as it was his first car, they got married at Cardington in Shropshire. The bride forgot her bouquet, it was in Plaish 2.2 single track miles away, It took the Escort 5 minutes there and back including getting out and grabbing the flowers, but I might have been airborne a couple of times.....
I couldn't have done it in a large modern FWD car.
Thank heavens for good brakes, tyres, suspension, RWD, a loud exhaust, and illegal air horns.
I had to wash the car down for the photos as it was September, it had rained earlier, the harvest tractors had left the verges filthy, and I was using every inch of highway available to me._________________1974 Mk1 Escort. 1992 Mk1 Golf Clipper Cabriolet Auto.

Yes, it was Art. The crowd were not guests just tourists and general public that happened to see the old cars. David Priest had his MkIV back then and very kindly offered his services chauffeuring for the bridesmaids' car. That was in July 2001.

For more than 25 years I've been taking the black and yellow one to the same MOT station for its annual test. The garage owner started life working for Ecurie Ecosse who raced Jaguars in the 1950s. Sadly he is no longer with us but he was a tasiturn Scotsman with a wicked sense of humour and every year when I drove up for my MOT he would come out and look over the car and say "How did they manage to make them look so ugly?" knowing that I was hoping for a sympathetic appraisal and was not in a strong position to argue.

We used my son's A40 Farina mk 1 for my daughter's wedding, driven by my son on "L" plates, accompanied by the lady photographer. It must have looked odd to passers-by, as it had all the wedding tapes on, with two couples inside.
Just for interest, would I have counted as the qualified driver, even though I was in the back seat with the bride? Bride and groom went on honeymoon in his dad's then-new Dolomite.

Well I run a fleet of five wedding cars, a 1933 Armstrong Siddeley 15, a Daimler Fifteen 1934, two Daimler DS420 limousines and a Daimler V8-250.
I spend a lot of my time making sure they're reliable, especially just before they go out on a booking and we do some 50 to 80 events a year.
My record on breakdowns has been pretty good overall in ten years with only two occasions when we had to bring in a replacement before achieving the essential goal of getting bride to church on time.
My first "non runner" event was entirely unpredictable. One of the DS420 limousines, started fine, got the locality early, so early in fact I stopped outside a nearby cafe and went in to get a bit of lunch to take out ready for the wait after they arrived at church. Imagine my concern when turning on ignition nothing....
The battery had suddenly gone completely open circuit. Broken a link internally. Most extraordinary. I called a cab, abandoned the car to collect later. Got back to the garage to get the second DS420 out and made it to brides house with just minutes to spare. Very stressful!
But this was eclipsed by a long way on the second incident with the Daimler Fifteen the following year. Again, arrived early, Took groom party to church, got to brides house early and she was eager to set off. I told her it was way too early but she insisted so I took a longer route to take up the time. This entailed driving along the newly laid tram trackway in the town and then, less than 800 yards from the church, there was a sickening bang, a sudden grinding noise and the front left wheel departed on its own course heading directly for a large plate glass shop window and two older ladies stood outside the shop next to a wheelie bin, put out for collection. I watched in mute horror as the wheel hit the kerb and went airborne, striking the bin, which was fortunately full. This stopped it's tour and saved both of the women and the shop window from what could have been total carnage.
Of course a crowd quickly gathered round, made infinitely worse by arrival of the next tram behind, which of course could not proceed further as I was blocking it's path!
A chap passing on the opposite carriageway with an ex London FX4 taxi, carrying his family, stopped and turned around and offered to take the bride to church leaving his wife and kids on the pavement whilst a team of rugby players who were on the tram, on the way to a match, attempted to lift the car and get it out of the way. This move failed and whilst I was getting a replacement car arranged for the post church journey other local neighbours were pondering over the problem. A chap who was an MG enthusiast dashed off to his garage a street away to get a trolley jack to attempt to raise the car and allow it to be pushed out of the path of the tram. Then the police arrived.
By this time I was having a complete nervous breakdown and discovered the actual hub had sheared off still attached to the wheel, the stub still in apparent good order.
All of Nottingham's tram system ground to a halt for an hour due to the disruption to the schedule and my phone was pinging traffic alerts as a result. The police called in their own recovery specialist and meantime my rescuers had managed to lift the car and a team were pushing it on the trolley jack into a lay by just a few yards ahead where the police insisted I stay until it was uplifted to their pound.
I saw my other driver arrive in the Armstrong Siddeley heading to church then so at least one problem was solved.
The car was subsequently put up on a spectacle lift and towed away.
I thought that was enough for that day and set about getting back to sort out spares to get it fixed, only to have the local newspaper telephone me asking for my comment. I was told they had photographs courtesy of the landlady of the pub opposite (from her upstairs window) and it even made a column in the national papers the following day. I preferred to keep a low profile so made very little comment.
The problem was due to the wheel being stuck in the tram track and in trying to steer out of it the hub had cracked the flanges off the hub, probably a weakness not discovered hitherto by routine servicing but post incident all hubs have been cracking tested.
The car was fixed by Monday on the roadside just outside the compound and all I had to worry about was the bills, recovery, refunds, etc.
To date, it's the only real "total disaster" I've faced but Bride and Groom were at least happy how we handled the crisis and it no doubt gave a lot of people a bit of a laugh at my expense but laughing I certainly was not. However several years on we are still rated very highly in the area.
Peter